Time Walk
The Park's Quiet Edge
A street named for a French port sits nowhere near the sea, but beside a Victorian park. Walking it today, what stands out is the housing: rows of redbrick terraces and semi-detached houses, still largely as built. The street tracks the uneven edge of Myatt's Fields, so the park is always close on one side.
Beneath the tidy brick fronts lies a story of one family's estate-building and, further back, a family history that crossed the Channel. That story is where the street's odd name begins.
Name Origin
A Huguenot Family's French Memory
Calais Street was named for the Minet family, who laid out this part of Lambeth. William Minet was a third-generation descendant of Isaac Minet, a French Huguenot refugee, and the street's name recalls that family's French origins. The sources used here do not explain why Calais specifically was chosen over another French place-name.
History
From Minet Estate to Wartime Scar
The street belongs to a single development. Calais Street was laid out in the 1890s as part of the Minet Estate. It follows the irregular north-eastern boundary of Myatt's Fields park, the open ground the Minets helped shape.
The family's connection to the park did not end with the estate's layout. In 1935, Miss Susan Minet presented a further quarter of an acre of land near the junction of Knatchbull Road and Calais Street to Myatt's Fields. The Second World War left its own mark nearby: a V2 rocket levelled buildings on Lothian Road where it meets Calais Street.
The Minet family's gift of land to Myatt's Fields in 1935 came from Susan Minet, decades after her relatives had first laid out the surrounding streets.
People
The Minets, Three Generations On
William Minet gave the street its unlikely name, three generations on from Isaac Minet, the family's Huguenot ancestor. Susan Minet, of the same family, later added land to the park nearby.
Today
Redbrick and Bath Stone
The 1890s housing is still the street's character. Calais Street contains a variety of attractive, relatively unaltered late 19th-century housing, with the stretch opposite the park a mix of terraced and semi-detached houses in redbrick, painted stone and timber joinery.
On the Map
Calais Street Then & Now
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it called Calais Street?
It was named for the Minet family, who developed the street in the 1890s. William Minet was a third-generation descendant of Isaac Minet, a French Huguenot refugee, and the name recalls that French connection.
What is Calais Street known for?
Its relatively unaltered late 19th-century housing, built as part of the Minet Estate, and its position along the edge of Myatt's Fields park.
What happened on Calais Street during the Second World War?
A V2 rocket levelled buildings on nearby Lothian Road at its junction with Calais Street.